CLEAN WATER • CITIZEN ACTION • STRONG COMMUNITIES WATERKEEPER WATERKEEPER® 100% PCR Paper 4, Number Volume 4 Spring 2008 Spring 2008 $5.95 COVER PHOTO BY JOHN FOXX Arenal Quick drying upper and siped Spider Rubber® outsole for secure performance in the slipperiest of situations. ©2008 TEVA TEVA.COM EXHIBITORS IN THE U.S.AND CANADA Des Moines, IA Science Center of Iowa Milwaukee,WI Milwaukee Public Museum Shreveport, LA Sci-Port Discovery Center Austin,TX Texas State History Museum Detroit, MI Detroit Science Center Myrtle Beach, SC IMAX 3D Theatre Myrtle Beach St.Augustine, FL World Golf Village Atlanta, GA Fernbank Museum of Natural History Duluth, MN Duluth Entertainment Convention Center Oklahoma City, OK Science Museum Oklahoma Tampa, FL Museum of Science & Industry Birmingham,AL McWane Science Center Ft. 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Science World Davenport, IA Putnam Museum Lubbock,TX Science Spectrum Seattle,WA Pacific Science Center Winnipeg, Manitoba IMAX Theatre IMAX IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF IMAX CORPORATION. WATERKEEPER Volume 4 Number 4, Spring 2008 14 6 Letter from the Chairman: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 12 Ripples 22 20 No Water Left Behind 22 Founding and Future 28 Dams Kill Rivers 30 Rivers are Forever, Dams are Not 38 Salmon Nation: Restoring A Free-Flowing Klamath 40 Floodplains Flood: Controlling Floods as Nature Intended 32 41 Salmon and the Seminary Dam 42 Dam Relicensing Puts Power Companies in the Driver’s Seat 43 Taking Down Dams Before they are Built 43 Right Place, Right Time 44 Hydropower: Not Green, Not Cheap, Not Clean 48 Southeast Water Wars 50 Water Security, Water Honour, Water Flow 44 51 Towards Water Democracy: Dr. Vandana Shiva 57 The Way Forward: Working With Nature 58 Glass Half Full: Sandra Postel 60 Ganymede: The Waterkeeper 64 On the Water with James Holland 66 All Hands on Deck: Exxon 54 4 Waterkeeper Magazine Spring 2008 www.waterkeeper.org We all need clean water to survive. Be brave. Join me, my father and all our John Paul Mitchell Systems family to help protect our world, our waterways, our people and every living creature. - J.A. DeJoria, Age 10, with non poisonous bull snake Peace, love and happiness, John Paul DeJoria, CEO, and the entire John Paul Mitchell Systems family, supporters of Waterkeeper Alliance www.paulmitchell.com. Only in salons and Paul Mitchell schools. Letter from the Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The Grand Canyon n 1967 my father took me and eight ran desert. What was once a dynamic and power agencies obstruct and control her of my brothers and sisters on a Colo- specialized ecosystem cutting through the waters to favor hydropower production Irado River white water trip through greatest monument to America’s national over the river’s management as a national the Grand Canyon. Just above our put-in, heritage has been transformed into a cold park. The federal government provides Glen Canyon Dam had been completed water plumbing conduit between the two oceans of money to corporate agribusi- three years before and Lake Powell was largest reservoirs in the United States— ness to raise wasteful water-dependent still filling. The new dam complemented monuments to greed, short-sightedness crops like rice and alfalfa in the desert. the Hoover Dam nearly 300 miles down- and corporate power. Meanwhile, local and state governments stream at the other end of the Grand Can- All the grave prophecies of scientists encourage sprawling and water-hungry yon. Together, they promised to irrigate and environmentalists have come true. commercial and residential developments a thirsty west, generate hydropower and The reservoirs are emptying because of by offering tax breaks and by subsidizing create great lakes with recreational oppor- human consumption and evaporation, infrastructure including roads, sewer lines tunities for millions. But critics thought a situation now exasperated by climate and electricity. With such inducements Glen Canyon Dam a wasteful and reckless change. Lake Powell is nearly 100 feet developers are building golf courses and boondoggle to corporate agriculture and below its capacity level. Hydropower swimming pools in the Arizona desert. greedy developers. Environmentalists said They have drained the Colorado River dry the dam would destroy the Grand Canyon and are now depleting the 112-million- National Park’s unique ecology and that In the Grand Canyon... acre, ten million-year-old Ogallala Aqui- the lakes would lose horrendous amounts privatization of public fer under the Great Plains states, which of water to evaporation and seepage and has dropped several hundred feet since would soon fill with sediment. trust waters is occurring modern irrigation practices surged fol- That year we camped on the Colorado’s as governments subsidize lowing World War II. massive sandbars. In 2006, I returned to It’s not too late to implement rational paddle the Grand Canyon with my daugh- reckless and unsustainable water policy that serves America’s citi- ter Kick, my life-long hero and Harvard water use that favors greedy zens. If the grotesque handouts ceased, classmate Wade Davis and his daughter we could easily meet today’s needs, while Tara. I was sad to see that the spacious developers, powerful utilities protecting the rights of our children. We sandy beaches and massive driftwood must adopt healthy legal and economic piles where I camped with my father were and agribusiness barons over rules that reward the efficient use of water gone; the sands that once fed them are the American public. and punish misuse. now trapped above the dam. The river, The struggle for control of water is which should be warm and muddy is clear intertwined with the fight to preserve and a frigid 46 degrees. Four of her eight revenues have been at a standstill for democracy from the corrosive impacts native fish species are extinct, with two six years. Recreation access at the upper of expanding corporate power. The best others headed there soon. The canyon’s reaches of Lake Mead and Lake Powell measure of how a democracy functions beaver, otter and muskrat populations are now obstructed by savannahs of sedi- is how it distributes the goods of the have disappeared, as have its indigenous mentary mud. Water quality is dropping land; the air, waters, wandering animals, insect species. Sediment has already flat- precipitously and farmers need more wa- the fisheries and public lands, otherwise lined hydropower and nearly choked the ter to flush the dissolved solids from their known as the “public trust,” or the “com- upper reaches of Lake Powell, which is in fields. Yet the sprawl development and mons.” By their nature these resources severe decline as a tourist destination. The agribusiness consumption triggered by cannot be reduced to private property Colorado River no longer reaches the sea the dam’s original promise continue their but are the shared assets of all the people or feeds the great estuaries in the Gulf of ferocious pace. held in trust for future generations. Since California that once teemed with life. In- The Colorado River is the poster-child ancient times, the law of all just and eq- stead, it ignominiously dies in the Sono- for bad river management. Water and uitable nations has protected these public 6 Waterkeeper Magazine Spring 2008 www.waterkeeper.org trust assets as the property of all citizens always be able to use them.” Thirteenth- gitimate private property. Cochabamba’s be they humble or noble, rich or poor. century Spanish law likewise ensured the citizens were engaged in the most funda- Roman law, our most ancient legal public inalienable rights in rivers, springs mental fight for democratic rights. heritage, held that the most fundamen- and shores. Like the citizens of Great Britain in tal “natural” or God-given law required Neither could the King sell public trust 1215, Cochabamba’s citizens saw the that the “air, running water, the sea, and assets to a private party. The nineteenth- privatization of the commons as a threat consequently the sea shore” could not be century legal scholar Schultes described to their democracy and their lives. While owned as private property but were “com- public trust rights as “unalienable.” He privatization controversies in this coun- mon to all” Roman citizens. The Romans explained that “things which relate to try have not yet provoked hot confronta- vigorously protected the waterways and the public good cannot be given, sold, or tions like Cochabamba’s, public utilities the resources of the sea, seashore, estuar- transferred by the King to another person.” across North America are conveying wa- ies, wetlands and fisheries from control by Woolrych, another leading legal scholar ter supplies to private companies, often private individuals. Everyone has the right of the period, added that “notwithstand- at fire-sale prices. In recent years, only to use the commons, but only in a way that ing such a grant, if the public interest be vigorous protests by citizens have kept does not diminish its use by others.